'We're just going through this tough transitional point right now,' said Jim Walker, executive director of Big Car's Service Center for Contemporary Culture and Community. / Star file photo

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The two headlines — one Sunday, one Monday — said it all. Or so many people think.

Here’s how the story goes:

Lafayette Square might be trying to rebrand itself as the International Marketplace, but the Northwestside neighborhood is still an extremely dangerous place to be. Particularly the corner of West 38th Street and Lafayette Road near Lafayette Square Mall. That’s where there’s a strip club, a gun shop and a payday loans place. And it’s where, counting last weekend’s shooting, four people have been gunned down since January — one in broad daylight.

But that story is incomplete.

There’s something good on that corner, too. Something that embodies the kind of hope that rarely makes headlines, not the kind of hopelessness that always does.

Run out of an old tire shop only a few yards from where one man was killed early Sunday and another early Monday, the Service Center has been been trying to build a sense of community by bringing together residents for various events and civic projects.

In the disconnected concrete jungle of fast-food joints and car dealerships that is this neighborhood, doing that has been tough.

“We’re just going through this tough transitional point right now,” said Jim Walker, executive director of Big Car.

But on any given weekend, you can find good things happening at the Service Center and plenty of residents of all ages, races and ethnicities eager to participate.

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Like on Saturday. Just hours before 22-year-old Tony Muse was shot in the head during a brawl that spilled out of a graduation party, the center hosted a storytelling event called Tasting Success. Dozens of people showed up to try food from some of the famed local ethnic restaurants and hear the immigration tales of their owners.

Later that evening, there was a concert dubbed Summer Flavorz. A melting pot of local bands played.

These are exactly the kinds of things that neighborhood leaders want to promote. The kinds of things that further the idea that the neighborhood is indeed the International Marketplace.

The concert ended at midnight. Walker, his wife and a few Service Center staff members left. Less than two hours later, a brawl broke out in an adjacent parking lot. When police arrived, groups of women were fighting women and men fighting men. Gunfire erupted and Muse was found dead.

A few hours after that, a TV news crew stood on the edge of the Service Center’s property doing a live broadcast about the shooting. The hay from the urban garden was clearly visible.

The next night, police found another man shot dead outside Babes Nightclub. The strip club can be seen across Lafayette Road from the parking lot of the Service Center.

It’s ironic in a way. People are getting shot and dying all around the one place that’s shining a light on the life that has returned to the neighborhood in recent years.

Lafayette Square or the International Marketplace — whatever you want to call it — isn’t all bad. Sure it looks grungy in spots, but it’s a great place to go to eat lunch or dinner. However, the neighborhood is different during the day than at night, when the main activities go from eating and shopping to drinking and partying.

Still, Walker says he feels safe.

“We’ve been able to steer clear of this kind of stuff in our space,” he said of gun violence. “I think it’s a challenge in this neighborhood and other parts of the city.”

Big Car went through something similar when it first moved to Fountain Square in 2004. That was when most people still considered the Near Southside neighborhood to be seedy and dangerous — not the quirky, bike-friendly cultural district that it is today.

How did that change? How does one organization or one resident go about counteracting the negative perceptions of a neighborhood?

“With reality, I think,” Walker said. “The reality in Fountain Square changed because the positives began to outweigh the negatives. The more we can encourage positive activities, the more they will outweigh the negative ones.”